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Topic: You are a work of art (Read 742 times)

So here I'll try to wrap my head around an idea I came across a couple years back but haven't been able to solidify into easily understandable form. In these forums I see people packing the most brilliant thoughts into compact easily distributable sentences so your help would be very much appreciated. I've been able to explain this for handful of people through minutes of autistic blabbering but I don't really want to go through same shit over and over especially with the risk of pausing mid sentence and zoning out cause this kind of unformed thought causes glitches in my brain.

First premise derives from Nozicks Experience Machine, which he used to debunk hedonism by giving people the theoretical option to leave everything behind and plug themselves into a machine which would feed them eternal bliss. Nozick argued most of the people won't plug themselves in for eternity, which to him proved that people want more from life than only pleasure. But the Experience Machine could be used for more than that, for example living whole human lifetimes, like in that stupid game in Rick and Morty which just came to my mind and would have given me a much more sensible way to approach this concept. Anyway, that machine would be the ultimate storytelling medium so if ever invented, people would abuse it as they have been abusing books, tv, or videogames before.

The most read book happens to be the bible (a story about the past) and I red somewhere that the most watched film is titanic (also story from the past). So the most likely blockbuster for the experience machine would be about the past, and would be fucking boring. Just like your life.

Then the probabilities. What is the chance you'd experience this moment out of all moment's ever experienced. Pretty low, right? But if this moment was experienced by multiple people millions of times just because the idiots in the future see all your mistakes so exhilarating they want to dip into your life over and over again in midst of their daily routine. It's more probable to probable things to happen than the improbable(citation needed). So it's more probable you are experienced many times than only one, cause you are experiencing yourself.

In conclusion you might very well be a hit novel from the future.

Peace.

P.S I hope I had patience to edit this, but take it as a comprehension exercise. Most of us people make no sense.

Re: OP -- I think the main stumbling block is the way you're trying to reach Occam's Razor by way of statistics and probability, which as far as I can tell is, "It's more probable for a single thing to happen many times than only once," which I'm not sure plays out IRL.

It's a nifty way to recursively prove the point, though. "You are a story in the Experience Machine because it's more likely your moment of existence is repeated than it is being singular."

In order for the simulation to be indistinguishable actual eternal bliss, it would have to be non-terminating. The notion that subjects can 'opt-out' of this everlasting state defeats the premise. Either hedonism is as good as it gets, or the thought-experiment needs more work. Still, made me think.

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Hic Salta?________

Constant Eso-Opthamologist of Elicited Stopped-Clock Illusions, brings it back, or sinners just repent______

Re: OP -- I think the main stumbling block is the way you're trying to reach Occam's Razor by way of statistics and probability, which as far as I can tell is, "It's more probable for a single thing to happen many times than only once," which I'm not sure plays out IRL.

It's a nifty way to recursively prove the point, though. "You are a story in the Experience Machine because it's more likely your moment of existence is repeated than it is being singular."

Beautifully done! I have been away from this thought for a while and on further introspection I'm not sure that the Experience Machine would be the most likely way of rebirth, given that an AI would in most cases have an incentive to run multiple simulations of the past, past being inaccurate and hazy, so at least some iterations will include an indistinguishable version of anyone. Being a story feels more pleasant though because stories have purposes which makes this an useful anti-nihilism pill for my arsenal.

In order for the simulation to be indistinguishable actual eternal bliss, it would have to be non-terminating. The notion that subjects can 'opt-out' of this everlasting state defeats the premise. Either hedonism is as good as it gets, or the thought-experiment needs more work. Still, made me think.

I'm not arguing against hedonism, Robert Nozick was. I tweaked his machine to function as a movie theater for our transhumanist successors. Anyway in my mind bliss is depleting resource for the mind. Things are enjoyable as long as they are new or scarce, and repetition kills off the joy of anything. The machine would have to come up with new ways to excite you until only stuff that's left is the stuff you used to detest, and you'd welcome it with open arms. And after that literally everything sucks. That's one reason I wouldn't ever go to heaven.

>> I'm not arguing against hedonism, Robert Nozick was. I tweaked his machine to function as a movie theater for our transhumanist successors. Anyway in my mind bliss is depleting resource for the mind. *Things are enjoyable as long as they are new or scarce, and repetition kills off the joy of anything. The machine would have to come up with new ways to excite you* until only stuff that's left is the stuff you used to detest, and you'd welcome it with open arms. And after that literally everything sucks. That's one reason I wouldn't ever go to heaven.

Beyond resisting recurrence, nothing gets old quicker than a new thing.

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Hic Salta?________

Constant Eso-Opthamologist of Elicited Stopped-Clock Illusions, brings it back, or sinners just repent______